Actor/activist George Clooney has malaria. Seems he contracted it earlier this month while traveling in the Sudan and is "feeling rough." That's a pretty extreme way to raise awareness for a cause, George! Well, keep the gin and tonics coming.

Two days ago, NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd was whining to the Washington Post that Barack Obama doesn't talk to the press enough. Yesterday, Obama talked to the press. Today, Todd whined about Obama talking to the press.

Five months prior to Riverhead's release of a "heh!"-funny essay collection whose publication surely has nothing to do with her connections, the Observer has seen fit to lengthily profile Vintage publicist Sloane Crosley. She's non-threateningly pretty, often listens to people when they speak to her, claims to have an unusually ample ass for a Caucasoid, and is thus "the most popular publicist in New York." Joan Didion finds her "sweet"; Elizabeth Spiers likes her; Lockhart Steele likes her. You probably like her too. She's pretty much been spending the last few years building a web of alliances that prevents anyone from criticizing her in a public forum! Crafty. But, as reporter and former Weekend Gawkerer Leon Neyfakh discreetly intimates between em dashes, there's a private anguish behind all that public likability.

Writing in the Pursuits section of the Wall Street Journal's weekend edition today, film critic Joe Morgenstern takes approximately 70 square inches to explain why the "gory, stupid" action movie 300 is a symptom of the empty bigness that Americans now demand from their entertainment. (We'd link to it, but according to the "Notice to Readers" that pops up when you visit WSJ.com, the Journal's entire website is completely down.) 300 is "blood-soaked and utterly bloodless," Morgenstern writes, and its popularity is an indication of our preference for fast and loud hugeness over slow and moving smallness.